Tag Archives: Ohio

As promised, the blog entry about Myles Pizza of Bowling Green, Ohio. But first, let me tell you a little bit of how I view pizza in general, so that you’ll better understand my review.

Two pieces of pepperoni and one piece of (my fav) white pizza with garlic, tomatoes, spinach, and ricotta, from Margherita’s Pizza.

I subscribe to the over arching theory of pizza that people compare all pizza to the best, or most frequently eaten, pizza of their youth. For me, that was Margherita’s Pizza on Main Street in Newark, Delaware. The pizza at Margherita’s is a perfect example of thin crust, foldable, New York Style pizza (though they do have some thick crust Sicilian pizza as well). My father was a professor at the University of Delaware for 33 years. When I would go with him to the office or class, we would inevitably wind up there for lunch, and he often brought it home for dinner.

It is to this pizza that I used to compare all pizza. I was frequently disappointed by a chain pizza or when traveling. Sometimes this happened because the pizza was just plain crappy: bad sauce, tasteless cheese, soggy crust, minimal toppings, etc. But sometimes it was because the style of the pizza was just different from what I’d grown up with.

An example of California Style Pizza from California Pizza Kitchen.

When I went to college in California, I was broken of this habit by simply allowing a new way to frame the concept of pizza into my mind. The pizza of my youth was the best example of thin crust, New York Style pizza (even better than I’ve had in New York recently). But there are other styles of pizza in the world, and I found great examples of those over the course of my life. So, in California, I learned to like California style pizza: strange toppings, a sweeter, soft crust, tomato-y sauce (as opposed to a sauce with a strong spice or garlicky note to it).

This new theory was tested when I moved to Chicago, and experienced Chicago Style Thin Crust pizza (different from the deep dish, sauce on top, eat with a fork and knife kind of Chicago Style pizza). This pizza has a thin, crisp crust, the cheese is usually a mixture of cheeses and placed above the toppings, and the sauce is more seasoned than either California or New York Style. It’s also often cut in squares, despite being round in shape. This produces my favorite little bites of Chicago Style Thin crust: the four little triangles on the outer edge.

Okay, that out of the way, on to Myles Pizza Pub of Bowling Green, Ohio. One more thing, though, on pizza in general: if you want to find good pizza, go to a college town. Bowling Green is home of Bowling Green State University, so of course, I expected to find good pizza there. But Myles Pizza far exceeded my expectations.

He warned us that it was “Toledo Style” pizza. Now, I’d never heard of Toledo Style pizza, so I was immediately curious. When the pizza arrived with our breadstick sampler (Garlic, Cheese Stuffed, and Pepperoni Stuff Breadsticks) I went out to pick it up and when the delivery guy handed it to me I nearly dropped it. It was so heavy!

Loaded pizza at Myles Pizza Pub

When we got the food inside, Richard and I were astonished. Not only was there mountains of well browned mozzarella cheese, but loads and loads of toppings. We chose pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and onion. This is a knife and fork pizza like Chicago Style, but unlike Chicago Style Deep Dish, the cheese was on top, not sauce. Also, it wasn’t a pizza cooked in a dish. The crust was crisp and browned like a pizza cooked on the floor of a pizza oven should be. But (bonus!) there was so much cheese that some of it had oozed over the side during cooking and gotten that tasty caramelization that happens to deep-dish pizza. The sauce was spicy with loads of garlic and so good I could eat it with a spoon.

In summary, Myles Pizza Pub serves a Toledo Style pizza that is a combination of many of the great parts of Chicago Style deep dish: lots of toppings, cheese and sauce and a little caramelization on the cheese. Yet it still has some of the characteristics of a hand tossed pizza with a crisp, chewy crust with the body to stand up to all those toppings.

If you ever find yourself in Bowling Green, OH, I say go for Myles Pizza for your night out eating pleasure. It’s well worth it, especially since one slice will fill you up, giving you left overs for lunch (or breakfast) for several days. Enjoy!

Sad note, Myles pizza closed in November 2016. Their pizza will be missed!

We left Indianapolis today after meeting with the gentleman from iRV2 who gave us the new Omega arms to fix our slide. We’re still living with a living room slide that doesn’t open, but hopefully we’ll fix it with a little help from our friend.

When we were looking at coaches over two years ago, we’d looked at our first Holiday Rambler, a 1999 Vacationer without slides. Without having looked at one with slides, we tried to tell ourselves that we could live without them. The price certainly was right. But then we saw some coaches with slides and we decided there was no way we could live without one (even though I still think every slide you add to a coach is another thing to go wrong).

Our site at the Wood County FairgroundsThis experience of living without a slide has certainly proven that, though it may be fine for some, it’s no way for us to live! We can’t pass each other without someone getting squished. Poor Chloe is constantly underfoot. And we can’t eat at the kitchen table and both of us see the TV at the same time. Tough times, eh?

We left at a 11 AM, and got into Bowling Green, Ohio with plenty of daylight to set up and relax. We’re staying at the Wood County Fairgrounds for the next couple of days.

When we decided back in August to visit our good friend in Bowling Green, we wanted to stay at our favorite campground there, Fire Lake Camper Park. Although this park is mainly a seasonal place, they do have three pull-thru spots along their rectangular lake, and we’ve always been there in either autumn or spring. We’ve found it relaxing, and the views of the sunset over the lake are lovely.

This time, however, Fire Lake was already closed for the season when we’d get to BG. So, the only choices for camping in BG are Mary Jane Thurston State Park which is kind of far from Bowling Green, and the Wood County Fairgrounds. We’d never stayed at a fairground before, and I was not sure what to expect.

The Jr. Beef Barn next store to our site.Long story short, we love it. Even though the grounds are shuttered up and kind of lonesome, it is still neat to be able to walk the grounds without a huge crowd of people. There is only one 50 AMP hookup: right between the Fine Art Barn and the Jr Beef Barn, right down the street from Gate C. The site is very large and although not quite level and grassy, we still managed to find a spot that, with the jacks, left us level enough.

Although shuttered-up, the grounds are far from empty. Workers are doing maintenance that they couldn’t do during high season, and people are dropping off boats, trailers, and RVs for winter storage.

There’s a guy training his horses for cart-racing in the track right across from our site this morning. First he runs the horse around the track to practice their trotting. He has this contraption on the back of a pick-up truck, and he hooks two horses at a time up to it. He drives around at trotting speed and the horses practice keeping their pace steady. Then he goes round the track with each of the horses several times, riding behind them in the cart. I liked watching him and imaging the chariot riders of ancient times, racing around a similar track to cheering, wild fans.

The fairgrounds manager is very friendly and made us feel welcome. He answered all our questions about the grounds and the Wood County Fair, which has been held in Wood County for the last 143 years. Last year they saw attendance grow to 103,000. For camping at the fair there are 600 campsites. They usually fill about 550 of them (!) and it costs $150 for the 8 days of the fair.

What I think is most exciting about the Wood County Fair, and what may bring us back to BG next August to attend, is the very unusual Combine Demolition Derby. When he told me about this, my jaw just hit the floor. I’ve only ever seen regular Demos on TV. I could only imagine how exciting it would be with COMBINES (*grunting sounds* More power!).

If you’ve been to a Combine Derby, please, let me know what it’s like in the comments.

Road Data for November 2nd, 2015

Traveled 213 miles in 4.5 hours from Mooresville, IN to Bowling Green, OH